with the recommendations (which have been accepted by government overall) focused in the following areas:

Adapting to today’s funding environment: funding overall has reduced by 13% in real terms with big impacts on local authorities, resulting in some closures and moves to trusts. There are changing business models but museums are told to to increase and diversify income further to build sustainable and resilient models. Use of existing public funding needs to be smarter and more streamlined, focused on long term benefit.

Growing and diversifying audiences: museum visits have increased significantly but visitors are less likely to be representative of the very young or very old, ethnic minorities, disabled, or lower socio-economic backgrounds. Museums are actively addressing this with a range of initiatives – nationals are mentioned particularly.

Dynamic collections curation and management: is affirmed by the review as the fundamental point of museums – “to protect and take care of the collections they hold, and to make them accessible to the public, not just physically, but meaningfully as well”. This produces challenges: maintenance backlogs; reductions in curatorial time and expertise; and needs for growth and rationalisation of collections. Sharing skills and infrastructure is seen as a good option. There needs to be a strategic framework for national museums to work with the rest of the sector.

Contributing to placemaking and local priorities: an emphasis in the Culture White Paper on the role of museums in communities, local decision-making, and priorities such as health and wellbeing. Museum roles in the local economy; wellbeing and education; tourism and businesses. Museums need to measure economic and social impact.

Developing leaders with appropriate skills and diversifying the workforce to adapt to reduced public funding and encourage more diverse audiences.

Digital capacity and innovation: need for greater understanding of digital potential in museums. Emphasis on working internationally as the UK prepares for Brexit, which raises challenges for staff resources, loans/movement of objects and tours, and funding.

Strategic Review of DCMS-sponsored Museums in England

Reaffirms the importance and value of national museums and confirms that they will continue to be Non-Departmental Public Bodies, with various options for greater freedoms and governance.

UK Partnership Framework that will include systems for more loans from nationals to partners in the sector; sharing of collections, skills and expertise; international activity and support for inbound tourism contributes to government priorities set out in the management agreements. DCMS will develop a digital strand to the Partnership Framework that will work in tandem with policy recommendations from the Digital Culture Project, with the aim of: encouraging better integration of digital technology into business models and everyday working practices; and facilitating access to the appropriate level of digital expertise in executive teams, boards and committees, including on the use of intellectual property.

Diversity: Changed workforce and board strategies to enable more diverse workforces as a key way of reaching and welcoming diverse audiences. Compliance with the Cabinet Office’s Governance Code on Public Appointments

Commercial income: Sharing ideas and best practice on commercial strategies. National Audit Office will consider updating its 2004 report on income generation in museums, including compiling statistics, benchmarking income generation and making recommendations on how sponsored museums could increase revenue from commercial operations.

Spending Review: In preparation for the next spending review, the sponsored museums and DCMS should work together to better understand the outcomes, effectiveness and economic value of each ALB. To achieve this together, the sponsored museums and DCMS will undertake, or commission, an assessment of the specific requirements of each museum, what they deliver in return for funding and the extent to which they are achieving this. In preparing for the next spending review, DCMS will review grant-in-aid in its sponsored museums and consider whether changes are required to better meet needs and recognise performance. This may include options on funding attached to performance, efficiencies and/or quality measures.

Reserves and Capital needs: Sponsored museums should review their reserves and endowments and related policies to ensure they are appropriate for the respective organisations and are transparent. DCMS, in consultation with Her Majesty’s Treasury and the sponsored museums, will consider how best to provide and/or lever further capital funding for national museums to undertake critical maintenance and repairs in order to protect and preserve historic architecture and their estates, and to enable the museums to become as efficient and effective as possible.

Shared Solutions project: By April 2018, DCMS and agreed sponsored museums will begin a project to identify and deliver further innovation and efficiencies. This will ensure recommendations complement the Public Bodies Relocation Programme and Industrial Strategy and is expected to include: collections management (including ethical disposals and transfers), shared storage solutions (including digitisation) and asset management; business models (including better engagement with digital technology and shared commercial operations and procurement processes); back office functions and collaboration (including the potential for shared roles and processes across smaller ALBs to improve resilience); and funding options, including joint and/or co-financing to spearhead initiatives.

Efficiency savings: DCMS-sponsored museums should continue to submit efficiency returns, demonstrating how they intend to make year on year savings of 1% and invest these savings in front line services. DCMS-sponsored museums should aim towards 3% savings by the end of the spending review period and continue to invest these in frontline services.

Sponsor relationships: The DCMS sponsor team and each museum will review their relationships, drawing on the Cabinet Office’s Code of Good Practice. DCMS will work with its sponsored museums to revise management agreements and performance indicators from 2018/19 in line with agreed priorities and in support of the new Partnership Framework.

Governance and compliance: Sponsored museums will complete a corporate governance self-assessment by June 2018 and take actions by December 2018. Sponsored museums should be compliant with cyber security requirements and develop or review fraud strategy, risk assessment and fraud response plan by June 2018.

Spectrum 5.0 has been issued in September 2017 as the most recent update on the collections documentation standard, used by UK museums and collections management systems and software. This is one of the foundations of museum accreditation used by the Arts Council, which is currently conducting a review of accreditation to be completed in 2018.

Undertake in-depth qualitative research to explore arts and cultural participation and attendance barriers and motivations among people with different disabilities, within different ethnic groups and at different ages

Undertake in-depth qualitative research to explore gender-based tastes and preferences for arts and culture among boys and girls aged under-15, and the influence of parental behaviours and attitudes on child participation. Such research could be complemented by identification of effective practice across the sector in engaging and involving boys and young men in arts and culture

Complete literature reviews and qualitative research to identify workforce development and change management models that support leaders within the sector to transform organisational cultures and develop a more equal and diverse workforce

In the context of the arts and cultural sector, undertake in-depth qualitative research on equality and diversity issues facing the protected groups of sexual orientation, religion and/or belief, pregnancy and maternity, marriage or civil partnership status or gender re-assignment

Undertake additional quantitative data analysis of key datasets such as the Taking Part Survey, particularly across protected characteristics (e.g. by sexual orientation, ethnic groups within the 2011 census categories) where there has thus far been limited analysis

Complete a focused literature review specifically on equality and diversity issues in relation to the library sector.

Most recently, the UK parliament's House of Commons Culture Media and Sport Committee has published the report of an inquiry on the Work of Arts Council England. The report emphasises the importance of the Arts Council's funding, but recommends a need to change the balance of funding to favour regional arts, culture and (non-national) museums provision outside Greater London. Concerns are raised on falling central government funding and there is seen to be a need for development of thinking on philanthropy and the role of local councils.

The changing landscape of culture, arts and museum funding in the UK in 2014 means that organisations and coalitions are developing advocacy toolkits to promote their perspective and identity to government, funders, the public and other stakeholders. Examples include:

The Arts Council (ACE) published a report in July 2014 on Understanding the value and impacts of cultural experiences, commissioned from WolfBrown. This report is a broad international literature review that deals with language and concepts; measuring individual impacts; valuing arts and culture from the marketing perspective; and creative capacity of an organization. Value is discussed in terms of economic, social and public value, with a primary emphasis on the arts - the broader interest of the humanities and sciences don't seem to be part of scope.

This follows the ACE review earlier in 2014 of The value of arts and culture to people and society. This was an evidence review, looking at economy; health and wellbeing; society; and education, together with gaps in evidence and needs for future research.

Also interesting is the current work of the Warwick Commission on the Future of Cultural Value which has developed discussion and evidence to ask "what kinds of investment do we need to ensure the future of culture and how can we work to ensure that all forms of culture are inclusive and accessible for all?"

These issues of geographical inequities and transparency were explored at the UK Museums Association Conference in 2013 with a presentation by David Anderson (video, summary and commentary from Maurice Davis of the MA).

A more general think tank view of economic rebalancing is found in Transforming the Market: Towards a New Political Economy (Patrick Diamond, 2013, published by Civitas). This perspective argues for the rebalancing of the UK economy in both sectoral and geographical terms, with an emphasis on economic issues, but including creative industry, some aspects of education and the idea of moral balance in political terms.

The UK parliament's House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee has announced an inquiry (likely to hear evidence in March 2014) to look at the Work of Arts Council England - a general investigation but including economic and artistic criteria that underpin funding decisions, and seeking views on "whether the geographical distribution of funding is fair and the justification for the current weighting of this towards London". A short debate (skip to 2.30 p.m. in the link) on Regional Arts and Culture took place in parliament on 4 February 2014 in Westminster Hall in which parliamentarians explored the issues and heard the response of the minister responsible for culture.

A strong emphasis in these discussions is funding for performing arts and fine arts, with some attention to museums as part of the arts and creative sectors. There is not yet a lot of inclusion of broader cultural capital in terms of public experience and engagement of the humanities, social sciences or natural sciences, or the work of libraries, heritage organisations and others.

The Natural Sciences Collections Association (NatSCA) has published Understanding Audiences: The Popularity of Museum Galleries. The report looks at visitor attitudes to different gallery types in a range of mixed museums in England and Wales: ancient history and archaeology; art; discovery zones; history of collectors/collections; live animals; local history; natural sciences; world cultures. A complex picture , with natural sciences and art the most popular, but with some polarity in views.

Arts Council of England (ACE), AHRC and Nesta are supporting a two year research project from 2013-15 on the use of digital technology by arts and cultural organisations in England. Digital Culture is an interim report from the study.